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What we feed our pets / Dit eten onze huisdieren

Killian and Ophelia both have been eating raw food ever since they came to live with us as a puppy. This means that they gets fresh meat instead of kibbles or canned food.
How does it work?
I’ll be using the dog as example here, since I have most experience in feeding Killian & Ophelia a complete raw diet.

The basic principle is that, based on the weight of your dog, you have to determine the amount of raw food you can feed him. For an adult dog with an average amount of daily physical exercise you have to give about 2.5% of his body weight. Dogs who are very active, will need about 3% of their body weight. For our dogs it varies a little because there are times when they are very active (when friends come to visit and play), but there are also periods when they’re extremely lazy. Next to the weight, it’s important that you look at your dog to see how he’s doing: if you see that your dog is a little thin, you give a little extra, if he has a tendency to get a little plump, feed him less.

For our dogs, 80% of their daily food is based on the principle: 70% muscle meat (= everything that is no organ meat counts as muscle, so meat on bones is also muscle), 15% bone (eg necks) and 15% organ (heart, liver, tripe, …).
The remaining 20% ​​consists of healthy table scraps, vegetables (eg beans, carrots), free-range eggs from our own chickens or kefir. Every now and then they get a little bit of pasta (without sauce) or bread (without topping) because they like it so much.
You can add fish to the menu once a week.

Our dogs are fed meat from a variety of animals, and of course they prefer some over others. The species they like most are: chicken, turkey, beef, goat, sheep, guineafowl, deer, salmon and cod. They gets meat from other animals as well and sometimes they even get something more “exotic” like kangaroo or ostrich meat.

The advantages of raw food are for us personally:
– You know what you feed your pet because you put together the entire menu yourself. It makes it easier to control the amount of food your pet needs.
– Your pet will only eat nutrients that the body really needs, instead of added (often chemical) products to enhance the flavour, fragrance and colour. In other words: it is healthier! The fur and teeth are the most obvious proof of the positive effect of a raw diet, but in the long term there’s also a decrease when it comes to eg kidney, bladder and liver disorders.
– There is variation in the menu. We do not like to eat the same things every day, so why should our pets?
– At the end of the day (and taking the lower amount of veterinary bills into account) it’s cheaper than feeding kibbles or canned food.

Attention!
– Feed only raw meat and fish. This is especially important when it comes to bones or fish. Both meat and fish bones splinter when cooked.
– Pork is not included in the raw diet for dogs and cats. Pigs can be carriers of the Aujeszki disease (related to rabies) and dogs or cats can be infected when they eat contaminated raw pork meat. Though the disease isn’t frequent anymore in our areas, I guess it’s still better to be safe than sorry. Besides, there is plenty other meat.
– Provide at least 4 different types of meat, fish not included in order to have enough variation. Meat from different animals differs in composition, so feeding meat of at least four different kinds of animals ensures you of feeding your dog as complete as possible.
– Many veterinarians are unfortunately still biased when it comes to raw food. However, a vet is not a nutritionist, and a lot of people distrust what they don’t know. Moreover, some vets have an agreement with a kibbles manufacturer (often earning a % on the turnover from kibbles sales in their practice), which of course also partly explains their attitude.

For our other animals I also prefer a diet that is as natural as possible.
Unfortunately we haven’t been able to completely convince the cats of changing to a raw diet, which means that kibbles still are a big part of their diet. I am feeding them grainfree kibbles, though, since cats cannot digest grains, so it’s a useless ingredient in most kibble brands which may even cause health problems. We make sure to feed them the kinds of raw food they do like, though (chicken, turkey, small pieces of heart and occasionally a little bit of fish).

When we still had rabbits, we mainly gave them a lot of hay, a daily portion of vegetables (chicory, carrot, tomato & cucumber as a basis, supplemented by what is in the house that is edible for rabbits: leaf celery, parsley, lettuce, spinach, sweet pepper, …) a bit of fruit as extra (apple, pear, banana, strawberry or raspberries) and only a little bit of rabbit pellets (the green ones, not the mixed pellets).
The chickens mainly get mixed grain, from spring to late summer every other they I feed them some pellets to support the hens when laying eggs as well as some calcium. Furthermore they get vegetarian table scraps (= fruit & vegetables) and a little bread, rice or pasta.